No, you can explain it without actual malice. All it takes is Musk having no clue who these people actually are, and not taking the time to find out, because he's got a whole government to go through, so he can't take the time to actually look at any department.

But it isn't easy to tell the difference between that kind of no-time-to-check recklessness and actual malice, at least in any one instance. (You might be able to tell statistically, at the level of the whole government. Not with any one department, though.)

But it's just as destructive as actual malice, so maybe it doesn't matter whether it's malice or not.